Our March edition of
YCW eNews contains this article:
It's quite possible that there is no better internet marketing tool than the very powerful "blog." Short for WebLog, a blog can be used for anything from a collection of links, to commentary on current news, to a place to post regular devotional thoughts, to an online journal or diary. Why should you (or your pastor) have a blog? Here are just a few reasons:
- Blogs provide an easy way to provide regular fresh content without technical expertise.
- Blogs allow for the author's personality to shine through in a way that informational websites usually don't.
- Blogs will help your community get to know you better.
- Blogs allow for controlled and focused dialogue around a particular topic.
- Blogs are very search-engine friendly, and may help you improve your visibility on the internet.
I'd like to take some space here to expand each of those points, and to invite you to add your comments about how you have used blogging to expand your internet ministry:
1. Blogs provide an easy way to provide regular fresh content without technical expertise.Anyone who can write an email can write a blog entry. Yes, it will take a little technical expertise to setup your blog on your website, but once you've done that, you can just give a username and password to the blog owner and let them start posting. They can write and publish, without any intervention from the webmaster!
2. Blogs allow for the author's personality to shine through in a way that an informational websites usually don't. Blogs have developed a reputation for being a more informal means of communication than a polished, published website. Authors have more freedom to be personable, and to share details from their lives. You might use a blog to show the development of a sermon or sermon series, allowing people to see the questions that you are asking, and the lessons you are learning.
3. Blogs will help your community get to know you better. You might use a blog to talk about your interests and hobbies, thus helping people in the community see you as a real person. You might talk about community events, or something your kids did. You might use your blog to invite dialog from the community, or to provide answers to Biblical questions.
4. Blogs allow for controlled and focused dialogue around a particular topic. Often, a scripture passage that you might preach about on Sunday morning will be far to complex to share all of the lessons that you learned in your study. You could use a blog to develop those concepts further, for those that were interested in going deeper. Or, you might choose to write a devotional blog--I know of one pastor who is "blogging through the Bible," sharing the lessons that he's learning as he reads.
5. Blogs are very search-engine friendly, and may help you improve your visibility on the internet. Because blogs are content-rich, search engines love them. If you are using blogger (this blog was created with blogger), then you can quickly notify Google of new posts. You can set your blog up so each post gets its own page, and is somewhat optimized for search engines. Done right, a blog will help improve your visibility to search engines, which will also expand your internet ministry.
What other ways are you using blogging tools to enhance your ministry? What questions do you have about getting started? Go ahead and post a reply, I'd love to hear from you.
Grace and Peace,
Jonathan Twitchell
YourChurchWeb.net
Labels: blogging, design, purpose, quick blog, Search Engine Optimization
